More and more website designers are choosing to design “Mobile-First”. In the past, it was common for designers to create and optimize the desktop/laptop version of a website design first. Once that has been completed, they would then turn their attention to the mobile version of the design.

One downside to doing this is that priority is essentially given to desktop/laptop users. Unfortunately, many design elements and functionality that are optimized for desktop computers and laptops do not transfer well to the mobile version of the design.

The growing importance of mobile designs has contributed to many designers following a “Mobile-First” strategy with their designs.

In this article, I would like to talk about why it is now so important to do this.

Mobile Internet Usage is Increasing Every Day

Mobile internet usage continues to grow every day. Some of the statistics about mobile usage from online stats service Statistic is astounding. Their latest mobile report states that:

45% of organic search engine visits in the USA came from mobiles

93 million people use Facebook mobile in the USA and 109 million people use the Facebook mobile app

Like it or not, you can no longer consider mobile design as an after thought. In 2015, if you want to optimize your website for your visitors, you need to ensure their mobile experience is functional and enjoyable.

You Will Focus on Core Functionality

When you are creating a design for a mobile screen, you have a lot less screen space to work with. You cannot add many of the cool design elements and bells and whistles that you could for a larger screen.

This forces you to focus on what is important i.e. core functionality. Unnecessary items that do not enhance the user experience are therefore eliminated.

Designers who have adopted mobile-first believe that this design process is more practical as when you design the mobile version of your website design first, you are not faced with difficult decisions over what elements need to be removed. All you need to do is focus on creating a great user experience.

Mobile-Friendly Websites Now Rank Higher

Last month Google rolled out their mobile-friendly update. This update affects the search engine rankings of websites in mobile search results.

It affects all languages in the world and is applied on a page by page basis, not a website by website basis. This means that mobile-friendly areas of your website will not be penalized if other pages on your website are not optimized for mobile devices.

Google states that pages that have not been optimized for mobile devices can still rank well if they have high-quality content. However, the message from Google is crystal clear: Website owners need to cater their websites to mobile users. If they do not, they are going to see a huge drop in search engine traffic from mobile users.

Final Thoughts

If you have been designing websites for years, you have inevitably got used to creating new designs in a specific way. I can, therefore, empathize with those of you who are reluctant to change the way they work. However, this is a step you will inevitably have to take at one point due to the importance of mobile traffic.

To find out more about mobile-first designing, I recommend checking out Luke Wroblewski’s book Mobile First.